So here’s something we don’t normally discuss, in general, but it’s actually really fascinating and I’m sure you, like me, wouldn’t have ever described flies mating quite like this: “They get up to the ­craziest stuff. Amazing genitalia.” Well, now London’s Natural History Museum has put it out there, so to speak.

It’s been dubbed the “Sexual Nature exhibition” and basically it’s exactly that – the sexual nature of animals. Obviously being an exhibition it means that actual stuffed animals are exhibited as if they were actually doing it. For instance, have you ever wondered how chimps do it, seeing as they’re so closely related to us? They’re passionate too, apparently.

The Natural History Museum’s foreword is particularly spicy: “Explore sexual selection and different mating systems as you encounter fascinating Museum specimens, live creatures and witness dramatic BBC wildlife footage and other revealing films. The exhibition contains specimens and specially commissioned exhibits that have never been on public display before.”

One of the museums senior curators, Richard Sabin from the mammal group, said that he is “looking forward to visitors’ reactions.” And so he should. You’re probably not going to look at your pets in quite the same way again.

He was also quite happy to throw it out there himself too, “They’ll have seen animal courtship on television, but nothing quite as, um, graphic as here. It’ll get them talking, certainly. What we hope is that it wipes away the whole thing about this being a taboo subject. Because, of course, nothing could be more natural.”

The display is on from today and ends at the beginning of October 2011. Highlights include actress Isabella Rossellini’s interpretation of “the sex life of the angler fish in one of the most entertaining of her hilarious short films series, Green Porno.”

Cool. I’m glad we got this out of the way then.

[Sources: TheGuardian and Natural History Museum]

[Image: John Phillips/UK Press]